This invention relates generally to processing aircraft flight data and more particularly to exporting processed flight data for long term storage.
Gas turbine engines used for powering aircraft in flight are routinely subject to various maintenance procedures as part of their normal operation. To aid in the provision of such engine services, aircraft are commonly provided with onboard engine performance monitoring equipment that collects relevant flight data during operation. In some instances, the flight data is collected manually. Airlines commonly use an engine condition monitoring program to analyze the flight data and track the engine's performance. In simple terms, the program monitors the flight data and if a significant change in the flight data is detected, then the program issues an “alert” indicating that maintenance action may be needed.
Generally, such engine condition monitoring programs only retain the last 50–60 data points collected. While the program can be configured to never delete data, the database and program efficiency would quickly become untenable because of the limits of the program's data storage capacity. Thus, most users allow the program to automatically delete the data, retaining only the most recent data points.
However, having an engine's entire life cycle history would be very useful in the overall maintenance of the engine. Being able to evaluate an engine's entire life history would provide valuable additional information on what is normal and abnormal for the engine, as well as providing useful insight into the production and overhaul work practices. Engine condition monitoring programs do have the capability to save past history in the form of compression points. Compression points comprise smoothed values for the first data point of a given time period, such as every month. Unfortunately, these compression points are not very helpful for long term analyses because they generally do not accurately reflect an engine's performance over a lengthy time period.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to be able to retain all collected flight data without compromising the efficiency of the engine condition monitoring program.